


All That is Red

by somanyfeelings



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, Soulmate AU, and for the last time when they die, in second person because i felt like it tbh, you know the one:, you see colors for the first time when you meet your soulmate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 17:53:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4109764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somanyfeelings/pseuds/somanyfeelings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You can tell, somehow, that she is bright; even in grayscale, she shines, and it is not unlike a squint before the sun on a foggy day, and not unlike the feeling of confusion that brings—because how can the sun be so shocking if it is hidden, if it is unseen?"</p><p>Delphine's world is in color around Cosima.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That is Red

_I._

The colors don’t come immediately, though that is how you always heard of it happening. That is what the stories said: the moment you met your soulmate, your world would burst into fire and water and feeling, and you would _see._

That is what people told you, that you would see, as if your eyes now were lackluster, failing—you did not believe this. You never believed the stories.

_II._

You meet her in a lab and then a hallway and you cannot tell what color her bracelets are but you stare anyway, stare not at them but the way they dance, shake, move, and the way she does the same. You can tell, somehow, that she is bright; even in grayscale, she shines, and it is not unlike a squint before the sun on a foggy day, and not unlike the feeling of confusion that brings—because how can the sun be so shocking if it is hidden, if it is unseen?

_III._

“Cosima,” she says, and you say, “Delphine” and wish the name did not taste so bitter on your tongue. (“Cormier,” you almost say, and then you remember: that is not you, not anymore.)

_IV._

You are lying, but there are some things you cannot fake, and the slide of your lips against hers is one of them. No, no, you think, but you move anyway, and your hands slide up and over her shoulders and reach blindly for a strap that isn’t there.

Your eyes are closed and your mind fills in blank with something that feels much too like a flash of color, and she mistakes your gasp for one of passion, and you are willing to let her—much too willing. You blink back the tears that rise when you finally open them once more and see the ceiling painted gray, but it does not help: they fall, gray tracks down gray cheeks.

_V._

You say, “Je t’aime.” You are not lying. Not this time.

_VI._

You settle into grayness like a second skin and you think, know, maybe, that this is what you are meant for. You are meant to protect, not to love—not like you want to, not like you wish to. You must make the choices she will not make, do the things she will not do; you must preserve her goodness even if it means shattering your own.

_VII._

She hands you her resignation on a Tuesday. There is no significance, no reason for this to occur to you, but it does: you hold the paper in your hands, and the edge flops down, and you think how odd it is to resign on a Tuesday.

The paper is white. This does not change. There is no color here, hiding, beneath some surface, behind some lock to which you have never had the key. But when you look up, the air around you seems to fail. Your lungs, empty, seek resuscitation and you gasp, slight and unwilling but echoing loud in the office.

Her bracelets, you notice, are rainbow, or what you can only assume rainbow is. Her scarf is deep and vivid, some color that blazes dull under your gaze.

Her eyes— brown. Shirt— blue. The words come to you, easily, unconsciously, and it is too much; you shut your eyes.

_VIII._

She does not believe you at first. She laughs, and the sound is like a cut—there is no humor here, only the bitter remains of a what-if so large it threatens to engulf you both.

It is wrong, so utterly cruel of the universe, you think, to give you this now. Now, when she is sick. Now, when she is leaving. Now, when she is—— (Dying?)

_IX._

She steps forward then and drops her gaze to the floor, and you wonder what it looks like for her, what shade of gray overtakes her vision then, only you do not wonder for long: she tells you then, tells you that her color came after you had left. You hear it in pieces, in “near death” and “color” and “came back” and “for you” and it takes you a moment to click it together into workable parts.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” you ask.

She shakes her head. “Would it have mattered?”

_X._

You do not know how you ever lived without color. You do not understand how the sky’s grayness on a rainy day strikes such melancholy into you when it once was a fact of life.

You have lost track of the level of your deceit, who you are fooling on each given day; you only know that this is for her and for them and for the purple of her scarf and brown of her eyes and rainbow of her bracelets. And that is worth knowing.

_XI._

Red becomes your least favorite color when you see how it gleams against the white tile sink, sticky and unwilling to wash away no matter how many handfuls of water she splashes against it, one and another and another before you enter, before you see.

(You see anyway, but you don’t tell her. You give her that.)

You know she is getting worse. You are a scientist, and you see the way she shifts during the night, and you keep one palm pressed tightly against her ribs each night when you sleep to feel her breath. 

_XII._

She pulls you outside one day after a rainstorm and points up to the sky, and you look up, blinking away the misty remains, to see the faintest of rainbows.

She shuts her eyes, and you are confused for a moment, for she has brought you out here to see yet she is doing the opposite. But her lips tug wide and wider into a grin you are scared to admit you have not seen in a long time, and you know that the realities of the colors do not matter—only that they are there.

You tilt your head back and close your eyes, find her hand with your own, squeeze.

_XIII._

The trips to DYAD go from months apart to weeks to days. She sits up one night and braces herself on one shaky palm and offers the other to you. You hold it in both hands and trace the creases that you have come to know so well.

“I, uh—“ She has always been so bright, so open, yet words fail her now. She looks down like the sheets will provide some kind of solace. “I just wanted you to know that I… I forgive you. For, y’know, when we met. And everything. I mean, I— I hope you know that by now. But I didn’t want to… I didn’t want you to ever wonder. To ever be unsure.”

_XIV._

Tears burn red down her cheeks, and you hate the way they mark against her skin.

_XV._

You tell her one day about your opinion of the color, about how red has come to mean sickness, sadness— _her_ , but the parts of her that make you have to swallow down tears. She stops short and stands, and you pretend not to notice her stumble.

She returns with a bottle of red nail polish that is more empty than not—“used to be my favorite, before I, uh… got too lazy to paint my nails,” she says— and she paints your nails—fingers, then toes—and leaves you there to stare down at them, wondering if these are truly your hands you are seeing. You are careful not to chip them, and the polish lasts three weeks. She runs her thumb along the smooth lacquer one night and laughs, quietly: “Red’s not so bad, huh?”

_XVI._

You do not tell her that it is, that it will always be bad.

_XVII._

You both know it is coming, and you spend each day, each hour, as near to her as you can be. You stroke her forehead with your thumb, pale save for one fleck of red that remains.

The sky is blue. You can see it through the window above her, though she cannot, and you are surprised, somehow, that it is still there, still teal by the horizon and pale by the clouds. Still colored.

_XVIII._

When she slips away, a thunderstorm of silence one night that is different from no other, what strikes you most is the way the blood on the pillowcase is blinding red before you blink, and blank, colorless, gray after.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this, like, _really_ late at night, so please excuse any careless typos that I definitely did not mean to make. Other than that, hope you enjoyed--any feedback you have is greatly appreciated!


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